We’re all told we need to blog, right?!
“Yeah, yeah”, I hear you say. We know it helps us connect with our audience and helps Google to find our website.
We know we’re supposed to do it. But what about time? I mean who’s going to feed the kids, take the dog for a walk and re-solder that ring that went wrong the first three times?
But it really is possible to blog well and not have it take over your life! Here are five ways you can save time AND improve the quality of your blogs…
Batch working
Batch working always makes sense. Whether we’re talking about making jump rings or writing blog posts, it’s always going to be better spending time focusing on one thing.
When we’re in the writing zone, it’s always going to be quicker to bash out a few posts in one go, than writing a bit, faffing around with something else and then coming back to the writing. These days people are waking up to the fact that multitasking is dead – it’s all about batch working now. It’s been proven that multi-tasking is completely counterproductive and is stressing us out.
So why not write all your blog posts for the month in one go? Not only will you get it done more quickly, you’ll also find your posts will feel more similar in style and you won’t repeat yourself.
How great would it feel to automate your blog posts at the beginning of the month and NEVER HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT AGAIN FOR ANOTHER MONTH?!
Write short and punchy posts
No one said a blog post has to be War and Peace. In fact, these days, people have a shorter attention span than ever (the average human now has an attention span of just eight seconds!), So it’s actually far better and more impactful to write in a short and punchy way.
Why not save time then and be super focused in what you want to write? Pop down a list of bullets of points you want to cover in the post and then fill them in. This will be much quicker for you to write, and much easier for your audience to read too.
Just use a photo and caption
Is time really short at the moment? Well why not keep it REALLY easy for yourself and just post a simple photo with a caption? It would need to be a photo that your audience would be interested in though. Maybe something you saw that really inspired you, or something you found funny. You know your audience, so if you think it would resonate with them, then post it.
Plan
Is that a groan I hear at the back?! No, I’m not a natural planner either. I’d say that most creative people probably aren’t. But if you can force yourself to do just half an hour (YES ONLY HALF AN HOUR!) of brainstorming and planning once a month, you can take the pain out of trying to come up with ideas.
Another good idea is to jot down ideas as you go along through the week (either in your phone or on a notepad) and then sit down and schedule them into a planner (like the one you can download here for free). Because if you try and think of ideas when you’re staring at your laptop screen…well, we all know that’s not happening, don’t we?!
Get people to guest post
Who says you have to write all your posts yourself? Getting guests to post on your blog for you not only saves you time, it also get them in front of a new audience and gives your audience a fresh perspective. Not only that, you might be asked to return the favour and guest post on someone else’s blog… giving you access to a whole new audience!
Everyone’s a winner here! Sounds great, doesn’t it? Well it is, but the key is to make sure that it’s someone your audience wants to hear from. It doesn’t have to be about jewellery… just someone they’re interested in. For instance, you might find out that your typical customer really loves architecture, so you could ask an architect to write a blog about their favourite buildings.
Don’t forget though that YOU are the Editor of your own blog and the quality control stops with you. So do still take a look over the post before you publish it.